No man an island

David Atkins wrote a nice piece today taking President Obama to task for his many errors on economic policy (Digby threw her inimitable two cents in as well) and outlines a framework for changing the narrative.  While I couldn't agree more--and I'd be the last to defend the President, who has been a monumental disaster from the Liberal standpoint on help for the working men and women of America--President Obama hasn't exactly had a lot of support from the spineless Democrats in the Senate:

• There's no way a $4 billion dollar cut in SNAP benefits can pass the Senate without Democratic votes (we provided 28).  Michigan's own Debbie Stabenow had the gall to say it was about cutting waste and fraud.  Au contraire, Senator Agriculture Industry, it's about taking food out of the mouths of children and giving the money saved to millionaires.
• Don't know about you, but I signed, oh, about a thousand petitions in the last couple of months to keep student loan rates low.  That worked out well--the Senate, with fifty-five fucking Democrats, managed to pass a bill that significantly raised the rates.  So much for competing in the global economy....
• Republican use of the filibuster has been unprecedented, but even with their minor victory in getting the President's nominees through recently, there still is great doubt Sen. Reid has the votes if he needs to go nuclear in the future.  I did, however, get a letter from my gutless Senator, Carl Levin, this week, outlining why he is against it.  Seems Sen. Levin can cite about three instances where Democrats successfully used the filibuster to prevent bad bills from becoming law.  What exactly Sen. Levin plans to do about the hordes of President Obama's judicial nominees that are languising while republican appointees run roughshod over American workers and support every bad bill/law/decision made by corporations and the chamber of commerce, Sen. Levin didn't say.  One supposes it's the usual gutless Democratic Senator answer:  we can suck on it.

Look, I get that the U.S. House is out of our hands--there's nothing that can be done.  And I really appreciate Senators like Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, and a few others.  But where's the love from the rest of the rotten bastards? 

For fuck's sake, without our votes they'd be back home doing what the rest of us are doing--actually working for a living.

Peace,
emaycee